I should have made it clear that I had worked out about the centreline rivets. However, being a boater, certifiable genius, and annoying smart-arse, those big dark holes in the bottom of the hull struck me as sub-optimal.

'Snagging' you say? Are you sure it wasn't 'Muttering obscenities, crawling over and under the boat looking for the problem, muttering more obscenities, hitting stuff with a hammer, trying desperately not to force anything and muttering more obscenities, all the while worrying about how much time the Chocky had left you'?

I should have made it clear that I had worked out about the centreline rivets. However, being a boater, certifiable genius, and annoying smart-arse, those big dark holes in the bottom of the hull struck me as sub-optimal.

What happened there is that we added two nice thick stiffeners to span F-15 where there's a disgraceful discontinuity in the structure running all the way around the front of the boat. It may as well say 'cut here' and that's exactly where it failed so we've spanned it wherever possible - not that we envisage another high-speed accident but more because in the few years I had the pleasure and privilege of working with Ken Norris this is the sort of thing he wanted to evolve on the rebuilt machine. There's also the fact that there's a repair in both outer floors in this area and the stiffeners span the repair too. Problem was - we ran out of rivets. We were about a half dozen short until a new box containing 7000 arrived the following week from our great friends and sponsors, Stanley Engineered Fasteners, at which point those big dark holes were filled with rivets.
There's always a certain amount of snagging to do. Sometimes rivets fail to set properly or the stems fail prematurely so there's always a few to be taken out and done again but for the most part modern rivets are amazing things. We've worked with old stock and they can be very temperamental but the number of failures on the floor, which took about 14,000 rivets to put it down, could be counted on one hand.
The choccie was the biggest problem that day. We accidentally used a batch with only a two hour open time so by rights we ought to have snookered ourselves but the low ambient temperature kept it quiet for the six hours we needed to get the floor buttoned up. It was quite a job!

I'm only a plumber from Cannock...

"As to reward, my profession is its own reward;" Sherlock Holmes.

I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man,
Or the man who’s half a boy.

Just to echo what Nigel and Jon have said above, to those of us watching progress from afar this seems like a defining moment. There are doubtless several mountains yet to be climbed, but it must have felt good when you stood back to admire your work. It is a fantastic achievement. Very, very well done, team!